Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday January 04, 2013 @04:35PM
from the manning-up dept.

ilikenwf writes "Whether you agree with his rationale for doing so or not, Adrian Lamo has come forward to discuss his reasoning for exposing Bradley Manning. Manning, now in federal custody, leaked thousands of U.S. intelligence files and documents. Lamo's side of the story shows that he was concerned for Manning's mental health and stability, and for the lives Manning was risking by releasing classified material — Afghan informants, for instance. Either way, this goes to show that if you're going to release stolen/hacked documents, it's best you do it anonymously and don't brag about it."

He claims he was concerned about Manning's mental health??? Manning has ended up locked in solitary confinement for YEARS on end. That is cruel and unusual punishment, a stone's throw away from medieval dungeons with assorted torture devices.

Naked does not equal freshly laundered clothes, cot with no bedding is not comfortable especially when you are regularly denied it use, air conditioning does not necessarily equate to comfort when gutless psychopaths adjust the controls and counselling services were severely restricted and used more in the content of the carrot and the stick. So as always distortions by a propagandist based upon the truth being left out.

Lamo is just a gutless coward who went for a personal grab for glory all else is a lie. Like your typical narcissist he personally has no real idea of what is appropriate social behaviour and what is not, hence his criminal past and then of course time spent setting up his 'sic' friends (narcissists have no friends everyone is there to be used). So typical self serving selfish disconnect from what is real human social behaviour and the arse hat makes a big grab for notoriety and fame by stabbing a true hero in the back. Let's not forget all the other arse hats at Wired who similarly could not differentiate between a hero and the criminals the hero was exposing, so a piece of shit web site that should be avoided. Even now Lamo focusing is on how traitorous behaviour is affecting him and not how it is affecting Bradely Manning nor and more importantly how it is affecting other whistle blowers. The shit head still can not see how his disgusting behaviour is serving to protects liars and criminals, how it allows corrupt governments to hide the truth, how other people in similar positions to Bradely Manning have to hide corruption in fear of being stabbed in the back by the gutless back stabbing Adrian Lamo's of the world. Two years and he is over it, a hundred lifetimes wont bury that deceit and it's attack upon the truth, for the self serving glory of some worthless jerk.

Lamo is just a gutless coward who went for a personal grab for glory all else is a lie. Like your typical narcissist he personally has no real idea of what is appropriate social behaviour and what is not, hence his criminal past and then of course time spent setting up his 'sic' friends (narcissists have no friends everyone is there to be used). So typical self serving selfish disconnect from what is real human social behaviour and the arse hat makes a big grab for notoriety and fame by stabbing a true hero

I am a former prison Monitor for the State of Arkansas. Not jiust the United Nations rapporteur, but me -- yes this former prison official -- knows stone cold that Manning's treatment was blatently, massively wrong. No self-respecting prison offical could get away with treating any prisoner in that fashion.
Except under the "special regime" at Quantico...

"Basically any form of pleasure was outlawed," Mr Hassani said, "and if we found people doing any of these things we would beat them with staves soaked in water - like a knife cutting through meat - until the room ran with their blood or their spines snapped. Then we would leave them with no food or water in rooms filled with insects until they died.

"We always tried to do different things: we would put some of them standing on their heads to sleep, hang others upside down with their legs tied together. We would stretch the arms out of others and nail them to posts like crucifixions.

Snitching on an organization is called whistleblowing... screwing over your fellow man = you're a POS, screwing over the man (or a corp) = you're a hero to some. You're assuming society makes always sense, welcome to the real world.

It appears that this atitude is disapearing. A few years back this Lame-o guy would be despised by his peers. People would turn their backs on him and no one would ever trust him again. Hell, even the military, who would like and use his info, would never trust him! That certainly represents the zeitgeist.

The govt writes the laws, so gives itself loopholes when it doesn't like those laws.

A solid true key point made in your post yet a point that shouldn't be the case. Law should be an independent entity above government and the law should be leveraged to hold governments accountable but it's not used this way, nor is it built to do so.

The Manning / Lamo situation is an interesting one as the greatest wrongs were not committed by either man. It's committed by the above statement. Think of the movie "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford where there's happy ending in the story. In real life it's mo

Corruption is a very interesting topic. I work on three simple philosophies when dealing with a wrong when it comes to business or government situations. They go like this.

1. Stupidity and/or Fear. People in powerful positions are sometimes afraid of change or are simply just too vanilla to get it. Regardless of how many letters before or after their name, what position they hold or how much money they earn. Stupid can be found at the top of any government or business food chain.

He didn't say he was concerned with his mental health and stability. The Slashdot summary is inaccurate (gosh, how could that happen?)

From TFA:

His statements there â" and others, such as his reference, seemingly in half-jest, to having his firearm ready after I mentioned (I think) that I'd been away from the keyboard for a phone call, and his anecdote about striking a fellow soldier â" did seem to indicate personal issues which might be coming to a head. But however I personally felt about his is

...So, Manning's rationalization for exposing many more people and putting them in a much graver situation must be worse, right?

If you do something you know will put people in danger, then it's only OK if those people are soldiers and foreigners?

I'm guessing the weight of criticism Lamo has faced has forced him to figure out a plausible alternate explanation (aside from "Manning was going to get US soldiers killed, so I turned him in") that was more palatable to folks who don't much care for the US or its m

Here is how I read this conversation...
Manning uncovered a lie by the USA Government.
Lamo uncovered a truth about a fellow soldier.
Both had just reasoning, but only one is being punished.
That is the problem here... these events would have never happened had the cover up never been.

Manning saw all the innocents whose lives were taken, and did the best thing he knew how to save more lives. If any lives were put at risk by the leak, they are far outweighed by the lives endangered by the military continuing to kill in secrecy, without consequence. Manning didn't commit treason. The US Military commits far more treacherous acts daily.

A member of the military decides to overrule the decisions of the civilian government. What could possible go wrong.If you do not think this is true you are an idiot. President Obama could sign a pardon today and this would all end.

You're projecting. If this is just about "proper channels", then why aren't military and CIA officials being prosecuted for the crimes revealed by Manning? Why is it that only the whistleblowers are facing prosecution, not those who committed torture and war crimes?

...So, Manning's rationalization for exposing many more people and putting them in a much graver situation must be worse, right?

Yea, about that...

It's been what, 2 years since Manning dumped those files, right? So, if there was any chance that said data would literally endanger the lives of agents in the field, as the government insists, surely said mortal danger would have occurred by now, or the agents would have been pulled, right?

OK, so where's the evidence that Manning's actions really did cause all this personal danger that the prosecution insists occurred? 'Cuz I haven't seen it, and as the months of nothing happening continue, I'm more and more inclined to call bullshit on the claims.

So, since nothing happened, it wasn't a valid reason for concern? What kind of argument is that against him releasing what he did?

this goes to show that if you're going to release stolen/hacked documents, it's best you do it anonymously and don't brag about it.

Seriously? The submitter thinks that the thing to learn from this is that you need to do things anonymously and don't brag about it? My god. Does anyone think about consequences, or anyone but themselves, before acting anymore?
And yes, that's a

My god. Does anyone think about consequences, or anyone but themselves, before acting anymore?

Yeah. Problem is people like you are blind to them. We need far more of our government's secrets leaked. 99% of what the US government is keeping secret has no business being secret. And a fair percentage of that is being kept secret to cover up illegal activity by the US government. When you have crap like this [techdirt.com] going on consistently something needs change and don't give me any crap about voting either. There are no options to vote for.

I read the news. Note I said read and not watch. I could list dozens of stories (probably hundreds if I took some time to research) of questionable if not down right illegal actions by the US government in the last few years. I'll name 2 quick ones other than the one I linked to just to get you started. The Kim Dotcom fiasco and the retroactive immunity for the illegal monitoring at the behest of our government by certain telecoms. Just friggin read some news and open your friggin eyes. It's not hyperbole. It's reality and it's getting worse rapidly.

...So, Manning's rationalization for exposing many more people and putting them in a much graver situation must be worse, right?

Yea, about that...

It's been what, 2 years since Manning dumped those files, right? So, if there was any chance that said data would literally endanger the lives of agents in the field, as the government insists, surely said mortal danger would have occurred by now, or the agents would have been pulled, right?

OK, so where's the evidence that Manning's actions really did cause all this personal danger that the prosecution insists occurred? 'Cuz I haven't seen it, and as the months of nothing happening continue, I'm more and more inclined to call bullshit on the claims.

So you're saying that agents' lives haven't been endangered? How do you know? What would you look for?

Notice his bizarre reference to Babylon 5 that seems to be without irony. He's obviously a fan, but did he miss the message the show had about how a group of soldiers had to follow their conscience and expose war crimes and corruption from their government at home.
These characters had to deal with propaganda from the government, professional snitches (Nightwatch) and threats of treason and imprisonment from their corrupt government.
I guess Adrian Lamo was rooting for President Clarke all along.

Yeah, the people who started these wars and set up the whole situation to begin with are COMPLETELY blameless and aren't responsible for the situations they created or the harm they've done! Fuck Manning! Asshole, making us aware of the horrors the US government commits on a daily fucking basis. What a selfish jerk!

You can blame both, actually. It's not an either/or situation. Our leaders should be held accountable. So should Manning for dumping classified data instead of being a whistleblower on specific crimes or incidents.

Ugh, quoting a Sci-Fi show in any context for facts and reality - you are excused from the table young man, go to your room and play with your toys.

Science fiction (both literature and tv shows) has a long and noble history of using future scenarios to make in-depth political and social commentary. In fact, I recall one Star Trek OST episode was considered to be too critical of the Vietnam War, and so was censored down to 9 minutes (!) when it was first aired in Australia to make it less subversive.

If you've never seen past the future tech and aliens to understand the underlying themes to be found in good sci-fi, then I pity you.

Yep. Military officers in the Abwher were also horrified by the criminatity of their elected government and did something about it. They were indeed shot, as you recommend.
I am a retired Naval Officer. Early in this decade I realized I can't wear my old uniform again, even for ceremonies. The reason is that the stench of criminality and war crimes by this government has permeated the fabric of the uniform I once wore to "protect the weak and liberate the oppressed." Take that as my "liberal" answer.
It's

Amazing, someone advocates making Lamo a "project" and is modded up (I can only assume "project" is a threat for either bodily or economic harm). Someone else defends the common sense and is modded down.

I can't believe these were his primary goals at the time. I think he got into something that was way more than he expected, and he pulled a c.y.a. move and sent Manning down the river. Saying he did it for the good of the Afghan people that might be named in the documents seems revisionist. But I guess only he knows, so he gets to tell whatever story he wants.

I think he got into something that was way more than he expected, and he pulled a c.y.a. move and sent Manning down the river.

Exactly.

Saying he did it for the good of the Afghan people that might be named in the documents seems revisionist.

It's not just revisionist, it's obviously false. He's acting as if those documents were transmitted in secret to the Taliban, and that if it weren't for him, nobody else would know about it. In reality, Wikileaks published the documents, so those Afghan people already had just as much warning, regardless of Lamo's involvement.

Uhhh... the only incrementing evidence there is the MAC address, which is hardware specific, but it's easily spoofed without loss of functionality of the machine. Of course VMs auto-assign MAC addresses themselves.

Either way, this goes to show that if you're going to release stolen/hacked documents, it's best you do it anonymously and don't brag about it."

Manning never "bragged" about anything. He was reaching out to a fellow hacker (who claimed to be a priest that Manning could confess to without consequence).

Manning was in a hostile environment with NO friends and with leaders who were corrupt and untrustworthy. His own father hated him for his homosexuality. He had nobody and was under an extreme amount of stress while trying to expose the corruption of his government. Almost ANYBODY would have made the mistake of trying to seek out a person that would be like-minded.

If this Adrian Lamo were honest and not just trying to save what is left of his "journalism" career, then he would be doing everything in his power to try and free Manning for standing by his principles.

Manning was in a hostile environment with NO friends and with leaders who were corrupt and untrustworthy.

Talk about prejudices, do you have any source that shows his leadership was corrupt?

I was in the Army for six years... there have been guys who were fairly universally disliked, but there are enough personalities that everyone inevitably has buddies.

while trying to expose the corruption of his government.

If he wanted, to, he could have made an IA complaint, or wrote to his Representative or Senator, both of which bypass his leadership. And everyone knows about those channels because people will file complaints against their drill sergeants in basic.

Talk about prejudices, do you have any source that shows his leadership was corrupt?

Yes. Manning himself, if you bothered to read the message logs between Manning and Lamo. Unfortunately the military decided not to investigate, which makes sense, because "leadership" is very seldom punished when they are only following orders. Under the Bush administration even Generals were fired for not towing the line (you can Google it, though it's common knowledge for anybody who pays attention to the news). When the political leadership is corrupt, it makes sense that the career soldiers who want to

There are people so religiously devoted to the idea that information should be free, all information, that they refuse to see any alternative. Someone who sets the information free is a hero of the highest caliber to them.

If you leak only certain things, well then the argument can be made that you did it out of conscience. You saw these things and said "The public needs to know this. Even though I took an oath not to reveal this, this public needs to know, it is more important." This is the kind of thing that happened with the Pentagon Papers.

However when you just go and wholesale release whatever you can grab, well that kinda goes out the window. You didn't do it for conscience reasons, you did it for other reasons, ego it

I think that the options of him shooting up his fellow soldiers was a concern in Lamo's mind, if you read around.

For me, a big part of the problem is that this is Adrian Lamo, and he has always seemed like an attention-seeking narcissist, even before any of this Bradley Manning stuff came up. Don't you remember when he was "the homeless hacker," and he spent his days sponging off of online acquaintances, trashing websites, and telling his story to any reporter who came along? I just have a hard time believing that his decision to turn in Manning was motivated by anything other than his pathological need for attention.

So does an attention seeking narcissist deserves death threats, which he has gotten? I hope you say no. Does an attention seeking narcissist deserve the immense amount of gut level hate that's being thrown at him? Seriously, Donald Trump has a better image than Adrian Lamo does to some of these guys.

So does an attention seeking narcissist deserves death threats, which he has gotten?

For his narcissism? No. But he just gave an interview where he said he consciously made a decision that he knew might have literally ended another man's life. Death threats are one thing, but how many people have actively taken steps to kill Adrian Lamo -- the way he admits he did to Bradley Manning? I hope he realizes that there might be consequences for actions as grave as his, but I assume he doesn't, because he's a narcissist.

Does an attention seeking narcissist deserve the immense amount of gut level hate that's being thrown at him?

Again, for his narcissism? No on the "gut-level hate," whatever that means. Bu

What are you talking about? Diplomatic relations were extremely strained and are still being rebuilt.

Yes it may have made sense to release critical information regarding military abuses. However the information was not read or sifted through in advance, instead it was dumped wholesale even though the vast majority of it was diplomatic gossip.

Lamo was arrested in 2003 for breaking into the NY Times website along with Yahoo, Microsoft and other. Before that he broke into various corporate networks, Lexis-Nexis, etc. [wired.com] Facing a possible 15 year prison sentence he took a plea bargain with reduced it to 6 month to be spent under house arrest at his parent's home. How did he get such a sweet deal? Was part of the deal an agreement to become an FBI informant possibly? Because if the Anonymous arrests have proven one thing, when hackers are faced with serving serious jail time, they will rat their own mothers out to cut a deal.

The things that really sticks out in this saga are 1) Manning had legal resources available to him to expose wrong doing in the classified world. He chose to ignore that route and used the media instead. 2) Lamo looked at the shear number of documents and had to make a choice to either do nothing with the possibility of many people being killed, or turn Manning in with the possibility of facing the death penalty. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

This saga has parallels in history. Think back to the first atomic bombs dropped on Japan. There were those in the program that had to come to grips with the fact that the work they did led to 250,000+ dead. They had basically two choices. Accept the notion that dropping those bombs led the the end of the war and ultimately reduce the total number of dead, or go crazy thinking otherwise, since we can never know for sure.

Right or wrong, Lamo chose his path and I will not fault him for it. Manning on the other hand choose poorly.

He's the kind of fuckhead who would be ratting his friends out an invading force the week after they rolled over his town. He's loyal to power, doesn't have any semblance of principles that exist outside of worshiping power, and therefore he's a fucking model American (or German or Frenchman or whomever is running the show).

He probably spends weekends having wet dreams about exposing plots that discredit Old Glory, or any of the principles she has pretended to have over the past 200 years. He sleeps with on hand on a flagpole, stroking it erotically as he tries to imagine a thousand dead bodies and ten thousand eviscerated limbs and container ships full of blood pouring over his naked body to celebrate the March of Freedom -- making a pitstop in weak Arab States before it returns to bring justice to the nigger Filipinos and nigger Mexicanos and Panamanians and Nicaraguans and Hatians, fouling his financial lebensraum and ruining a diverse America predicated on the phallus worship of power and of the gun and all her related orgasms of control and death -- as long as Freedom worships American Freedom unconditionally. Unconditionally, as judicious as God: you are either with Us, or you are against Us and you are doomed to die if you do not obey. But you won't have to wait for hell in the afterlife. This is currently available for overnight delivery, if you call now.

Just before he climaxes, a tear forms in Adrian's eye as he imagines how glorious and good he is, offering the savage Arab a chance to get on their knees and sign up for slavery instead of being killed on the spot. He revels in the moment that God was in the room when his Lord and Savior, George Herbert Walker, decided in his infinite wisdom to kill a few hundred thousand Iraqis and displace two million more in order to improve women's rights by sending tens of thousands of them into prostitution after killing their husbands on the battlefield. In his own way, Adrian has freed the Iraqi people from the tyranny of owning their own resources, and replaced their struggle against corruption of their government with a loss of basic security, infrastructure, and education.

And when he does climax, Adrian thinks about the power he protects. He thinks about raping and murdering a prisoner and then helping cover it up without having to answer to any semblance of a court. He heaves his entire body into rapture as he pictures an innocent man being electrocuted to death by someone from the Agency while Bradley Manning is forced to watch from a prison cell, crying for mercy, as part of his "non-torture" permanent solitary confinement that Adrian bravely initiated because... why?

Because in Adrian's sick fantasy, Bradley Manning is the individual who needs to be cured of dangerous fantasies. But the truth is that Adrian Lamo is a hallow imitation of a human being, and when he passes away there probably won't be a soul left to save. Lamo will worship whoever has the biggest gun, and it will serve him well because parasites make up for their lack of intelligence and abandoned independence with dependence on larger, more powerful entities who will accept fealty from any random piece of shit from the street, including Adrian Lamo.

And when he does climax, Adrian thinks about the power he protects. He thinks about raping and murdering a prisoner and then helping cover it up without having to answer to any semblance of a court. He heaves his entire body into rapture as he pictures an innocent man being electrocuted to death by someone from the Agency while Bradley Manning is forced to watch from a prison cell, crying for mercy, as part of his "non-torture" permanent solitary confinement that Adrian bravely initiated because... why?

...

I really, really hope the parent poster is some type of forum robot (pseudo-AI) whose algorithm/database has run amok...

This submission text is tainted by the poster's personal opinions - opinions which are, to say the very least, not unanimously shared. If you read the article it is striking how Lamo seems completely bereft of any sympathy for Manning, how he might have possibly fooled him into confessing by promising to treat it in confidence - and how he likes to hide behind complex (made up?) words and phrases instead of answering the interviewer's questions directly. One for the psychologists...

'Although none of the Wired articles ever mention this, the first Lamo-Manning communications were not actually via chat. Instead, Lamo told me that Manning first sent him a series of encrypted emails which Lamo was unable to decrypt because Manning "encrypted it to an outdated PGP key of mine" [PGP is an encryption program]."

What self-respecting hacker loses his old PGP key?

"After receiving this first set of emails, Lamo says he replied - despite not knowing who these emails were from or what they w

He either had no concern for the well-being of Manning and is just saying so or he is utter and complete fool for thinking that ratting him would result in anything other than utter persecution and kafkaesquely hellish existence.
Either he is an informer and enemy of free men pleading for forgiveness or a fool so bad he's got to suffer at least some repercussions.
I've no mercy to spare him.

The real reason is that he hasn't had any attention for almost a decade, when he was on The Screen Savers and stuff after all of his hacking pursuits, so he had to do something to get back on the news.

Colloquially: you're a dumbfucker. On what planet is leaking evidence of mass criminality, corruption and war crimes equivalent to leaking the identity of a whistleblower? Until you have a video showing Manning gunning down unarmed civilians - and then gunning down people trying to rescue the dying civilians - you can cram that false equivalency right up your dumb ass.

Lamo's concerns regarding disclosure of Afgahan informants from Wikileaks are thus far unfounded, and his claim that "WikiLeaks has a history of hand-waving away the consequences of their disclosures" doesn't seem to jive with the facts in this case. Below is a quote from the relevant section of the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].

Some, including Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai, raised concerns that the detailed logs had exposed the names of Afghan informants, thus endangering their lives. Partially in response to this criticism, Wikileaks announced that it has sought the help of the Pentagon in reviewing a further 15,000 documents before releasing them. The Pentagon said it had not been contacted by Wikileaks. However, blogger Glenn Greenwald presented evidence that the Pentagon had, in fact, been contacted, and that it had refused the request.

On 11 August, a spokesman for the Pentagon told the Washington Post that "We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents", although the spokesman asserted "there is in all likelihood a lag between exposure of these documents and jeopardy in the field." On 17 August, the Associated Press reported that "so far there is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation."

In October, the Pentagon concluded that the leak "did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods", and that furthermore "there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak." Both Wikileaks and Greenwald pointed to this report as clear evidence that the danger caused by the leak had been vastly overstated.

Yes, I know I'm threadjacking an FP, but the issue that is often made of this so far non-issue I find annoying, particularly because it tends to overshadow the facts that were revealed.

He also could not know that there would be fallout from the release. What he did was purely speculative. It seems like the prudent thing to do for someone who has genuine concerns about taking an action that would get someone locked up for the rest of the person's life, Lamo could have reviewed the documents himself or inquired about what precautions were being taken. Instead, he seems to have based his decision on what he reads in the newspapers and without contacting any of the parties involved.

Really Paul? You think it was irrational to fulfill the oath taken and the agreements signed concerning classified information because you (irrationally) believe it would have null effect? How could Lamo or anyone else concisely review the documents for scope? I suppose you have experts instantly available, for free I might add, that just provide this service on call?

I took the same oath when I joined the Navy, and part of that oath is to swear to uphold the Constitution. Manning had information on activities that are clearly unconstitutional. Your argument is what the establishment wants to hear: we must protect secret, illegal government activities that harm millions, if not billions, to protect a few people involved with these programs, even though no evidence can be provided that anyone has directly come to harm from these activities. It seems likely that any harm,

You can't directly tie the leaks to any particular case of harm for the same reason that you can't tie cigarette smoking to any particular lung cancer death of a smoker. You can, however, determine that the chances are very high that smoking has killed people--you just can't name any particular individual.

It's the same situation with the leaks. The Taliban has a long history of seeking out and killing people that they suspect are informants. When some random informant is killed, we have no idea how the Tali

Lamo's concerns regarding disclosure of Afgahan informants from Wikileaks are thus far unfounded, and his claim that "WikiLeaks has a history of hand-waving away the consequences of their disclosures" doesn't seem to jive with the facts in this case. Below is a quote from the relevant section of the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].

Some, including Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai, raised concerns that the detailed logs had exposed the names of Afghan informants, thus endangering their lives. Partially in response to this criticism, Wikileaks announced that it has sought the help of the Pentagon in reviewing a further 15,000 documents before releasing them. The Pentagon said it had not been contacted by Wikileaks. However, blogger Glenn Greenwald presented evidence that the Pentagon had, in fact, been contacted, and that it had refused the request.

On 11 August, a spokesman for the Pentagon told the Washington Post that "We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents", although the spokesman asserted "there is in all likelihood a lag between exposure of these documents and jeopardy in the field." On 17 August, the Associated Press reported that "so far there is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation."

In October, the Pentagon concluded that the leak "did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods", and that furthermore "there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak." Both Wikileaks and Greenwald pointed to this report as clear evidence that the danger caused by the leak had been vastly overstated.

Yes, I know I'm threadjacking an FP, but the issue that is often made of this so far non-issue I find annoying, particularly because it tends to overshadow the facts that were revealed.

When you're talking about a leak that big there is no way to know what it could expose. Adrian had no choice, and Bradley Manning betrayed his oath.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

I would have turned him in, too. Violating a security clearance IS a major felony, regardless of motivation, and releasing classified information without authority is just flat-out wrong.

Felony? How about violating a major treaty? The UN Convention Against Torture - signed by that hippie Ronald Reagan - requires prosecution of those who commit torture. A law that Obama has spent 4 years violating by protecting Bushco torturers from prosecution. Then there's the warrantless wiretapping, lying us into 2 wa